Oddparts Press

the body. Neither were they created for me by Thy truth, but by my
vanity devised out of things corporeal. And I was wont to ask Thy
faithful little ones, my fellow-citizens (from whom, unknown to
myself, I stood exiled), I was wont, prating and foolishly, to ask
them, "Why then doth the soul err which God created?" But I would
not be asked, "Why then doth God err?" And I maintained that Thy
unchangeable substance did err upon constraint, rather than confess
that my changeable substance had gone astray voluntarily, and now,
in punishment, lay in error.

I was then some six or seven and twenty years old when I wrote those
volumes; revolving within me corporeal fictions, buzzing in the ears
of my heart, which I turned, O sweet truth, to thy inward melody,
meditating on the "fair and fit," and longing to stand and hearken
to Thee, and to rejoice greatly at the Bridegroom's voice, but could
not; for by the voices of mine own errors, I was hurried abroad, and
through the weight of my own pride, I was sinking into the lowest pit.
For Thou didst not make me to hear joy and gladness, nor did the bones
exult which were not yet humbled.

And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of
Aristotle, which they call the often Predicaments, falling into my
hands (on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so
often as my rhetoric master of Carthage, and others, accounted
learned, mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride), I read and
understood it unaided? And on my conferring with others, who said that
they scarcely understood it with very able tutors, not only orally
explaining it, but drawing many things in sand, they could tell me
no more of it than I had learned, reading it by myself. And the book
appeared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as "man," and
of their qualities, as the figure of a man, of what sort it is; and
stature, how many feet high; and his relationship, whose brother he
is; or where placed; or when born; or whether he stands or sits; or be
shod or armed; or does, or suffers anything; and all the innumerable
things which might be ranged under these nine Predicaments, of which I